Every election cycle, the same argument resurfaces: political advertising should flow more heavily toward broadcast radio, and it doesn’t. The data backs up the frustration. Broadcast radio reaches more Americans weekly than cable news, broadcast TV, and podcasts combined. Yet campaigns still treat it as an afterthought. That gap isn’t new, and it isn’t going away anytime soon.

Political spending keeps climbing every cycle. Estimates suggest more money will be spent on the 2026 midterms than was spent during the entire 2024 presidential race. Billions of dollars will move through media budgets over the next several months. And radio will see only a tiny sliver of it. Understanding why requires looking past the audience numbers and into how campaigns actually think about advertising.

Two factors explain most of the disconnect. Neither has much to do with radio’s effectiveness, and both have everything to do with how political consultants approach image-making and risk.

Radio Can’t Build the Image

Campaigns are exercises in image construction. Consultants spend enormous sums making a candidate look relatable, competent, and trustworthy. Video does that job far easier and frankly better than audio ever could. A 30-second TV spot can show a candidate’s spouse, kids, and dog in the same breath as a factory floor or a construction site, whether or not that candidate has set foot there outside the shoot. Audio can fake a hard hat, but it doesn’t work as easily as actually showing the images to prospective voters.

Without visuals, campaigns have to lean almost entirely on substance. A radio ad has to sell a record, a policy position, or a promise, and it has to do it through voice alone. And, I don’t know if you’ve paid much attention to how efficient or effective our government is, but that’s a tall task. Consequently, campaigns default to video, where image can paper over a thin record far more easily than a script read into a microphone.

This isn’t a knock on radio’s persuasive power. If anything, radio’s intimacy should make it a stronger trust-builder than TV. But trust-building isn’t always the first priority in a 30-second spot. Image is. And image needs a screen.

TV Is the “Safe” Buy

The second reason has nothing to do with data and everything to do with instinct. Conventional wisdom in political advertising treats television as the safe choice, while radio still gets viewed as a supplement. That perception persists even though it isn’t supported by reach numbers. And it isn’t going to shift just because the numbers say it should.

Part of that comes down to ego. Longtime radio sellers or managers can all point to an advertiser who buys TV mainly because they “like seeing themselves” in the spot. Political candidates aren’t immune to that same pull. A candidate watching their own commercial run during a local newscast feels like momentum in a way that a radio buy simply doesn’t replicate, even when the radio spot reaches more people.

So even a campaign manager who genuinely believes radio delivers the better return has to sell that idea internally, often against instinct and precedent. Choosing radio over TV as the primary vehicle risks looking like a mistake if the race tightens, regardless of the actual audience math behind the decision. Meanwhile, nobody gets criticized after the fact for buying television — it’s the default, and defaults are hard to dislodge in a business built on risk aversion. That dynamic won’t change simply because CPMs favor radio or because reach numbers keep tilting in broadcast’s favor.

None of this means broadcast radio lacks the case for a bigger piece of the pie. The reach is real, the intimacy is real, and the return on investment argument has been made convincingly for years by radio executives across the country. And I’m not saying radio companies shouldn’t chase after that bigger pie piece. They absolutely should.

But political advertising was never built as a meritocracy, and campaigns don’t always spend where the numbers point them. They spend where the instinct — and the image — feels safest.

That won’t change in 2026. It probably won’t change in 2028, either.

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